Wow, the people you're dealing with sound pretty awful. I'm glad that you and your boss are on the same page regarding your priorities. I think this might just be one of those situations where they can complain all they want, if it's not your job, and not your hours, you don't owe them anything. Spending four hours in the car to swap out a hard drive is just *ridiculous*, seriously. If they have that many problems, they need an on-site IT person handling those issues. Ugh, I'm sorry, that just sounds like such a mess. I'm not sure how you're dealing with those people, I'd give them a very polite, but clear, explanation of my job priorities and make sure they understand that I'm not there to support them. Nicely, of course.

It does sound like they're desperate for some IT support. Maybe your company should start hiring contractors, and you can oversee them and sell their labor to this company? Probably not the business you want to be in, but I always thought it must be nice to be the person providing contractors, since they apparently get nearly as much money as the contractors themselves!

Good for you for not responding to work emails last weekend! You deserve that, you negotiated times that work for you, you deserve to have your free time be truly free, so you can unwind and work on your many other pursuits!

It is funny that we're both in grandkid-free-families . My mom was really upset about it for awhile, but I guess she's given up. I never wanted kids, but as I get older, I am a little sad. It's not sadness about not having kids though (I think) but more sadness that the way I was raised screwed things up for me so badly, that not wanting kids seems inevitable. I think if my family had been different, if I had fallen in love, etc... I could have been someone with kids, and would have been a great mom. But that just wasn't my reality. Oh well.

Is your pottery class just one night a week, or is it 3 hours over a couple days? Do you not have any other days with nothing scheduled? That would be hard for me to take too... definitely need a little unstructured time to relax and not feel like there's someplace you have to be. It sounds like a tough decision (I hate those, when it's not so clear cut what would be best!) but take heart - it seems like one that's easy to change later (i.e. if you don't quit now, you can still quit later. If you quit now and miss it, you can pick it back up later.)

I don't know with therapy, it's weird. I just realized that I used to feel pretty good after talking to him (but I'd feel worse, more scared and anxious, as the week went on). But now, I feel lousy after talking to him (and feel a little better, maybe, as the week goes on.) I'm not sure if I'm getting much out of it right now, but I also feel like part of that is *me*, my defensiveness and inability to really *do* therapy. But, I really want my life to be better... I don't know. I've got an appointment in a few hours, so I'm trying to figure out what to talk about today. He told me once that if I keep talking about therapy (in therapy) instead of my "real life", it would be a bit too "meta" and not useful, so I wonder if I'm falling into that trap.

Ugh, I don't know... I'm not feeling very clear today. I've been sick feeling all weekend, then last night I was absolutely miserable. Really felt bad and was too dizzy to stand up. Not good, didn't get to sleep until after 3:30.. still light-headed today, took the day off as a sick day because my brain is just not functioning...